Devices and/or methods for the output or display of, for example, geographic or cartographic depictions—the depictions comprising text objects—are frequently used in navigation systems, for example. In the case of application in navigation systems, it is generally necessary to prepare geographic information and depictions, such as map depictions, in such a manner that they may be displayed on a display unit belonging to the navigation system, in particular on a navigation display screen.
Additionally or alternatively to the display of geographic depictions and/or map depictions, it is also typically necessary in navigation systems to display text objects on the display screen.
Text depictions of this type are generally used for the textual identification of specific geographic features depicted on the display unit of the navigation system, for the identification of map features such as cities, streets, points of interest, landscape features, etc., or also for the selection of textually depicted list elements from a selection menu and/or from a list, for example, for the purpose of destination input.
Conventional navigation systems usually have comparatively small display units or display screens, however, on which multiple items of graphic information and also additional text information frequently must be depicted. Thus, for better orientation of the user of a navigation system, for example, roads, cities, and other geographic or landscape features are generally provided with a textual identification which—alternatively or additionally to the graphic depiction of the corresponding features themselves—must be housed on the available area of the display screen.
The problem frequently arises in the prior art that the space and/or text depiction area available on the display screen of the navigation unit is often inadequate to place the items of text information provided or necessary for informing the user to the desired extent and also in a readable size on the display screen.
This means that as a frequent compromise in the prior art only a part of the actually required or desirable text information may actually be placed on the display screen. Alternatively, in navigation units known from the prior art, items of text information are either shown only abbreviated, which worsens the readability and intuitive comprehensibility of the information, or a very small text size is selected, which may also result in inadequate recognizability. This may possibly even become a safety problem in street traffic, for example, specifically if the user of a navigation system must apply too large a part of his concentration to reading off texts which are illegible or difficult to recognize, such as road identifications, from the display screen of the navigation system.
A device and a method for generating a text object, which are based on a similar set of problems, are known from unpublished German Patent Application DE 10 2006 052 663.5 and corresponding U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/923,794 filed Oct. 25, 2007, which are hereby incorporated by reference as if fully set forth herein in their entirety. In these patent applications, to solve the problems described, it is suggested that a part of the text object to be depicted be depicted in shrunken and/or compressed form, so that a larger part of the text object or the entire text object to be depicted may be fitted into the space available on the display device.
However, this method does not take into consideration the possibly differing size of the meaning content of the various components of a text object in the modification and depiction of the text object. Therefore, it may occur in this method that parts of the text object which make up an essential meaning content of the text object are depicted strongly compressed or shrunken, while other parts of the text object which possibly only contribute little to the meaning content of the text object are shown in the original size.